Venues for Weddings with Built-In Wedding Facilities
Work Best for Outdoor Weddings
What does a wedding planner do when clients with unusual wedding ideas dream of outdoor weddings at untested venues for weddings that lack necessary wedding facilities and services? Garden weddings, beach weddings, and wedding events at romantic venues for weddings offshore are attractive in pictures. But what does a wedding planner do when the realities of wedding cost and the wedding timeline make planning for a wedding at a distant location impractical, or impossible? Identifying attractive venues for weddings with outdoor ambience and indoor convenience may be the first priority of an experienced wedding planner once couples getting married decide that only outdoor weddings match the vision, dreams, and desires for their special day. What does a wedding planner do if a boutique hotel, historic inn, or winery wedding outdoors isn’t exciting or daring enough, and wedding facilities the planner knows from experience fail to capture the client’s imagination? No wedding planning course has all the answers, but avoiding wedding stress by gently guiding clients to adjust their thinking is part of the wedding planner job. Gaining an intimate familiarity with alternative venues for weddings that work is essential preparation for the job, whether local garden weddings or outdoor weddings in the tropics are your prospective clients’ particular cup of tea.
What Does a Wedding Planner Do When Garden Weddings Get Messy?
Like weddings on the beach, park and garden weddings present uncontrollable challenges of sun, wind, and rain. While weather predictions are often wrong, the question what does a wedding planner do when conditions get messy always has a right answer: anticipate the unexpected at outdoor weddings and include back-up wedding facilities in the plan. There’s more. Consider tenting outdoor weddings held on rough terrain. Use vendors with enough equipment and experience to handle outdoor venues for weddings expertly, a critical requirement for caterers at beach and garden weddings. Avoid taking risks when wedding facilities are far away and the chosen venue lacks infrastructure. Nothing is messier than a rustic wedding where the caterer forgets the napkins, or the invitations failed to mention footwear. Being a wedding planner should mean never having to say ‘I forgot.’ At remote wedding venues, wedding coordinator duties include managing emergencies without an exit plan. Train well, hire an assistant, and leave extra time. After all, becoming a certified wedding planner means never having to say ‘I’m sorry’ because a vendor couldn’t find the venue, or guests couldn’t find a toilet. What does a wedding planner do when an outdoor wedding gets messy? Watching an expert in action is worth a thousand words, and leads to this question: how can I become a wedding planner like her?
Course Video Tutorial: ’An Award-Winning Wedding Planner Teaches Outdoor Weddings' (34:25)
Wendy Harrop, CPWP, the owner of It’s Your Day, is an award-winning Bay Area wedding planner with 20 years of experience planning edgy outdoor weddings for the diversity of couples, cultures, and venues that characterizes California. Venues for weddings she has planned include public beaches, parks, and gardens, as well as outdoor spaces at private wedding facilities such as wineries, museums, mansions, and historic estates. A strong believer in the power of showing, not simply saying, Wendy had the novel idea of inviting New Wedding Planet Members, through video, to join her in the hours before and during an outdoor wedding held in the fall, when the local weather can go either way, at San Jose’s historic Dolce Hayes Mansion. Watch as Wendy, her trusted vendors, and the mansion's hospitality management team move with her multicultural couple and their close circle of guests from a chuppah-covered sunset ceremony on the lawn to cocktails on the terrace followed by dinner and dancing under custom-designed tenting, dramatically lighted to create an Indian-inspired oasis beneath the stars. In this course video tutorial, Wendy teaches Members the principles, processes, and particulars of planning outdoor weddings while demonstrating how every imaginable problem has an intelligent solution as she manages last-minute changes and last-second emergencies at one of the Bay Area’s busiest and most versatile wedding facilities.
Learn 12 essential elements of planning outdoor weddings:
- How to guide undecided clients to make realistic decisions
- Why limiting the choice of caterers and venues for weddings is a must
- Why vision and venue always precede vendor selection in the planning process
- How to meet the logistical challenges of beach, park, and garden weddings
- Why maximizing wedding facilities by moving elements of the event around on the venue is cost-effective
- How outdoor weddings can reduce floral costs and qualify as green weddings
- When tenting, flooring, and lighting are optional, and when required
- Why culinary schools are wonderful venues for weddings
- How to predict your costs and set your fee for destination outdoor weddings
- What to look for when selecting vendors for high-risk outdoor weddings
- The advantage of full-service vs. food-drop catering for garden weddings
- The top 10 obligations for outdoor wedding planning in any location
